Quantum computing has been hyped a lot recently, both in mainstream media and in the alternative community. Here is a quote from a recent article that made me think of how quantum computing might be a smokescreen to divert the public's attention away from some other key research going on:

The space race in the 60s was dominated by the Apollo moon mission, which I believe was a smokescreen for another race going on behind the public scene that was about Soviet vs U.S. military preeminence in space. The most important first step during the cold war was to put satellites in orbit around earth, and that was in the U.S. done by the at the time secret agency NRO, not NASA which acted as a peaceful public front.

Today, the quantum computing race smacks of the same kind of incredible promise as the moon mission in the 60s. This thread is about examining quantum computing to check whether it is a viable technology or a fabricated hype of vapor-tech to deliberately divert our attention away from some other research or activity going on.

I don't know how quantum algoritms work and when I tried to find information about that topic I only found vague descriptions, sometimes followed by incredibly complicated math leaving me as puzzled as before. I will check some more information about the topic to see if my suspicion is justified or just conspiracy theory paranoia.

Preventing quantum decoherence is really tricky, but okay let's assume that it can be solved in practice for a large number of qubits (quantum bits). And this is already commonly known, such as the extremely low temperatures needed for quantum computing today. The more suspicious part in the quote is the "oracle" needed. One programmer writes in a blog post:

"In this blog post, I tackle my perplexity at what seems to be a common practice of using quantum oracles without worrying about their time-complexity. Am I the only quantum computer programmer worried about this? Is there some important point that I’m missing?"

And from one of the comments: "Yes, it’s obvious that almost all quantum oracles on n qubits require exponential circuit size."

Do they just put the classical computation stuff in a black box and call it a quantum oracle? I also found this Quora question page:

"Your question is an excellent one! You are revealing the soft underbelly of quantum computing!

An oracle is simply a memory lookup table with a mind boggling twist!...I call it the soft underbelly of quantum computing because this monsterous challenge is totally ignored in complexity counts of computation" -- Allan Steinhardt, PhD, Author "Radar in the Quantum Limit",Formerly DARPA's Chief Scientist,Fellow

So, then, if quantum computing is a smokescreen, then what is the purpose of that? What is behind the smokescreen? I came to think of a funny and maybe unrealistic scenario. Imagine that the powers of the world in governments, business and academia (WP) have been in contact with the breakaway civilization (BC) and here is a made up transcript from a fictional meeting:

BC: Greetings, representatives of the earth. We are the breakaway civilization, here to assist and provide you with amazingly powerful technology.

WP: Oh yeah? Like what technology?

BC: We have quantum computers that make your supercomputers look like pocket calculators in comparison.

WP: How did you solve the decoherence problem?

BC: Our quantum computers run on intelligent subtle energy. You have neither the knowledge of nor the access to this kind of energy yet.

WP: Why are you offering this kind of technology to us? What's in it for you?

BC: We remain trapped within the solar system quarantine. In order for us to become a part of the galactic federation we need to evolve into a unified world here on earth.

WP: Why do you need to help us? Can't you evolve on your own?

BC: A united world means that your civilization and ours become one. Us providing you with quantum computers is the fastest route to such integration.

WP: How can we trust you? What if you have back doors, Trojan horses or other hidden means inside those quantum computers?

BC: If we wanted to spy on you, or manipulate your information, we can already do so and we did so to make a point. Remember when we had collected classified information from Area 51?

WP: Yeah, how the heck did you do that? Did you use remote viewers?

BC: We used subtle energy. The main point is that we can tap into any information we want to, regardless of how protected and isolated the information is.

WP: Okay, so you provide us with quantum computers and we can use those in secret to further our New World Order agenda.

BC: No, no! No New World Order. No secrecy. You must tell the public about the use of quantum computers.

WP: Why?

BC: Because we need to integrate the whole world, including the public of course.

WP: But if we reveal the use of your quantum computers we must disclose our contact with you.

BC: Not necessary. You can have your own quantum computer research.

WP: We are nowhere near having quantum computers for any practical use.

BC: It's enough that you develop quantum computers with minimal capacity. Then you use those computers as fronts for our amazingly powerful quantum computers.

I find this a fascinating topic and also a bit frustrating because of the lack of information about it. And I think one has to be careful even though it's just conspiracy theories. Just stomping in like a drunken toddler and dishing out all kinds of fantastic conspiracy theories can have devastating long-term effects even when the intent is good. Anyway I found an interesting comment in this video from about 10 minutes:

For those who don't want or can watch the video, here is the transcript: "... I did an interview with Georgie Rose who is the CTO of D-Wave of course and it's funny that his parting message was: 'Machine intelligence is closer than you think.'"

D-Wave Systems is a company that builds quantum computers. What I found interesting is that the answer to what is closer than we think can be subtle energy. Maybe I'm stretching it but subtle energy already being machine intelligence fits my overall hypothesis.